BP cost-cutting measures are focus of U.S. inquiry into gulf spill

METAIRIE, LA. - There's been a lot of talk about the "safety culture" at BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, federal investigators are probing what looks to them like BP's save-money culture.

At a federal hearing this week, an investigator revealed that BP's top manager on a drilling rig is given a performance evaluation that includes the category "Every Dollar Counts and Simplification."

Of 13 employee evaluations reviewed by investigators, 12 had documented ways they had saved the company large sums of money, typically six-figure amounts, and one had put together a spreadsheet showing that he could account for $490,000 in savings, said Jason Mathews, an investigator for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which is conducting the joint inquiry with the Coast Guard.

BP witnesses have acknowledged this week and in previous hearings that oil drilling is a business, and costs have to be taken into account. But they've said safety always comes first, and they denied compromising safety to save money.

But the government this week raised the question of whether BP took incremental shortcuts because it felt rushed to finish the problem-plagued Macondo exploration well, a job costing BP about a million dollars a day. Simply leasing the Deepwater Horizon rig from Transocean was costing $525,000 a day. Eleven people died when the mile-deep well blew out April 20, and more than 4 million barrels of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico in the nation's worst offshore oil spill.

The hearing at a Holiday Inn conference room was packed with lawyers for oil companies and rig workers. Although not a trial, but rather a fact-finding inquiry, the hearings have had plenty of courtroom theatrics, including turbo-charged lawyers leaping to their feet to belt objections. There has been a smattering of accusations lobbed across the room to the effect that some attorneys are trolling for material for civil lawsuits.

One document introduced into evidence this week showed that the Macondo job, originally projected as a $96 million operation, was on track to cost $58 million more than anticipated.

BP kept track of estimated completion dates for drilling jobs, and tried to figure out where the rig could go next so that it could stay active and have minimal down time. E-mails discussed by attorneys this week showed that BP hoped to squeeze in a quick job in May - plugging a well called Nile - before tackling a more complex job at another site, the Kaskida well, that might take six months.

"I know you all are under pressure to finish Macondo so we can get Nile P&A moving and not jeopardize the Kaskida well," one BP employee, Merrick Kelley, wrote to Macondo well team member Brian Morel a week before the blowout.

On April 9, David Sims, a BP manager, explained to colleagues in an e-mail that the Nile job was a "gap-filler" between Macondo and Kaskida, and that he hoped the government regulatory agency, the Minerals Management Service, would provide some flexibility in its approved date for starting the Kaskida job because of delays in completing Macondo.

The Macondo well had been a "nightmare," in the words of one team member. The widow of a worker killed in the explosion testified this summer that her husband had told her that "Mother Nature just doesn't want to be drilled here." The first rig to drill the well was damaged in a hurricane and had to quit the job. The Deepwater Horizon, drilling fast, suffered a stuck drill pipe March 8 when the hole collapsed. The crew had to start over, drilling a new hole.

Mathews, the investigator, asked John Guide, the BP well team leader for the Macondo job, whether cost-consciousness colored decisions involving safety.


View the original article here

As offshore drilling moratorium nears an end, questions about what's next

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is getting ready to take his finger off what he has called the "pause" button on deepwater oil drilling, with environmentalists and oil industry executives alike worried about what comes next.

Salazar received recommendations Thursday from Michael Bromwich, head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, based on information gathered at public forums and private meetings in the wake of the BP oil spill. Salazar could act on the BOEMRE report well before the drilling ban's expiration date, Nov. 30.

While many Gulf Coast lawmakers and residents have been badgering the Obama administration to lift the deepwater moratorium, key industry and administration officials are struggling with the larger questions: not when drilling will resume, but how and where.

"We're stuck between 'drill, baby, drill' and the 'BP drilling disaster,' and no one knows which argument will win," said Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club's lands protection program.

Separate from Bromwich's report, Salazar on Thursday announced the federal government was adopting two new regulations for offshore drilling, including a drilling safety rule and a workplace safety rule. Both would impose new requirements on operators in the gulf and elsewhere.

The drilling rule dictates specific procedures aimed at preventing a blowout, including cementing and casing practices and the appropriate use of drilling fluids. It also increases oversight of mechanisms--such as the blowout preventer--that would shut off the flow of oil and gas in an accident, and requires operators to secure independent and expert reviews of their well design, construction and flow intervention mechanisms.

The workplace safety rule forces offshore operators to have what an Interior Department statement describes as "clear programs in place to identify potential hazards when they drill, clear protocol for addressing those hazards, and strong procedures and risk-reduction strategies for all phases of activity, from well design and construction to operation, maintenance, and decommissioning."

Energy industry officials said they would review the regulations and offer comments as part of the rule-making process. The drilling safety rule will take effect immediately on publication. Erik Milito, upstream director for the American Petroleum Institute, said, "Getting a good offshore safety rule in place is critical to the nation's energy future. The gulf and other parts of the nation's offshore areas are vitally important to helping meet the nation's future energy needs. The rule will affect every offshore energy project for years to come. It has to be right."

In the report Bromwich submitted to Salazar Thursday, he proposed new rules for drilling, as well as contingency measures to bolster the industry's response to any future spills.

Oil and gas executives are steeling for a slower and more costly permitting process that could hinder drilling even after the moratorium is lifted. And they worry that they won't be able to develop new areas - from Alaska to the East Coast - that President Obama outlined when he unveiled his five-year leasing plan on March 31, a few weeks before the BP blowout.

Environmentalists, in contrast, are hoping that the congressional limits on offshore drilling that expired two years ago are reimposed, or at least that the pace of development is slowed.

And the administration faces difficult questions about whether - and under what circumstances - it will allow leasing in areas from Alaska to off the coast of Virginia before Obama's first term ends.


View the original article here

Suit alleges BP cut back on safety before oil spill

The New York State comptroller, the Ohio state pension funds and other large investors have alleged that BP made cost-saving cutbacks in its safety operations prior to last year's major oil spill and that it disregarded safety warnings from its own managers.

The new documents in a securities fraud class action suit allege that the company "terminated" Curtis Jackson, then a senior manager for Gulf of Mexico operations, and Phil Dziubinski, a senior safety official at BP Alaska who warned of worker fatigue from extensive overtime.

Dziubinski's quarrel with BP was described earlier in the Wall Street Journal, which said he and BP had reached a confidential settlement.

The new filing also says that Kevin Lacy, described as BP's senior vice president for drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico, resigned in late 2009 "because of disagreements with BP over its lack of commitment to process safety." The lawsuit says that Lacy had been recruited from Chevron to improve BP's drilling protocols.

BP spokesman Scott Dean said the company would not comment on pending litigation.

The investors, represented by the firms Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll of Washington and Berman DeValerio of Boston, produced what they said was an internal BP document that said: "It's become apparent that process-safety major hazards and risks are not fully understood by engineering or line operating personnel. Insufficient awareness is leading to missed signals that precede incidents and response after incidents, both of which increases the potential for and severity of process-safety related incidents."


View the original article here


Investing.comThe Exchange Rates are powered by Investing.com.

Categories

Addiction (2) Advance (8) Claim (4) Claims (4) Companies (2) Economic (1) Ensure (1) Forum (1) Growth (1) Healthy (2) Homeless (3) Insurance (15) Investment (1) Investors (1) Market (1) Mortgage (2) Organizations (1) Penetration (1) Short (4) Statistics (4) Window (1) Women (3) Working (1) Young (1)